Learning how to die well

As if my mother wasn’t tormented enough by everything that’s going on, I really sent her over the edge when she found out I had been reading a book on “The Art of Dying Well.” I may have mentioned my perfectionist tendencies in past blogs; like everything else I do, I was going to do this the right way.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I had no intention of actually dying, but I was on a roll since the “first time” I had breast cancer. I checked myself into the hospital for my first chemo with a big smile, never expecting to be a cancer patient who … well, dies. I thought that maybe if I read the book, I could avoid all the pointers; turns out, it had some really excellent ones.

I recently heard Elizabeth Edwards give a speech where a member of the audience asked how she felt about the fact that she was going to die (if you aren’t aware, she has metastasized breast cancer) and she said, “We are ALL going to die – I just have a little bit more information!”

Along the same lines, I finished reading the book titled “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has terminal, metastasized pancreatic cancer that has spread to his lungs; he also has a lovely wife and three children under the age of six. Just the idea of not being around to raise my daughter causes deep knots in my stomach; I truly cannot even think about it or I would surely collapse.

So does all this talk of death mean I am going to die? Well, eventually, of course, but I hope later rather than sooner. Having had cancer twice, I cannot help but think of it from time to time. This week I had quite a few doctor visits and it seemed to come up more than normal. Have any of you made peace with dying?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzette Lipscomb

Suzette Lipscomb has done the cancer dance twice in her young life. Originally diagnosed with an aggressive form of invasive ductal breast cancer at 36, she endured six long months of chemotherapy and then...read more